National: Paterson

Malcolm Smith and David Paterson are pursuing parallel tracks for an M.T.A. deal. Paterson's secret plan, as we said yesterday, would reimburse school districts for what they pay in payroll tax monies. Three of the four suburban holdout legislators are mulling the bill. Andrew Cuomo is expanding his probe of pension fund abuse to other states. In New York, he is subpoenaing the records of companies that won state contracts after dealing with uber-lobbyist Patricia Lynch. Cuomo is not,...

Mayor Bloomberg is seeking to grab control of Governors Island and Brooklyn Bridge Park, pushing the Paterson administration aside in an attempt to spur progress on the two projects, both of which would create new real estate development and public parkland. As part of the mayor’s plan, his administration would take money it invested in the Javits Center (the city and state each have committed $300 million for a major expansion that was subsequently scaled...

In case there was ever any doubt, there's not enough stimulus money to go around. About $66 billion too little--for New York projects alone--to be precise. As part of the Paterson administration’s “Economic Recovery Update” on the stimulus spending, the governor’s office sent an email out this afternoon of a draft list of requests it has received for infrastructure-related federal stimulus funds. The unranked list, a 461-page document with 11,842 projects, totals around $70 billion in...

ALBANY—Bill Cunningham, who retired last month as the governor's secretary, remains close by. David Paterson was asked about Cunningham's new role after the Post reported this morning that Cunningham remains on the governor's staff, earning $170,000 as a senior adviser. "I didn't rehire him, we just put him back where he had been very effective as an adviser," Paterson said. "His role is as it had been: a person that worked on a number of special...